Home rental platform Zenify raises Rs 6 cr in pre-Series A funding
Zenify, a home aggregation and rental management platform, has raised pre-Series A funding of Rs 6 crore from HNI investors. The funds will be used to expand to other geographies and strengthen its team.
Started in 2012, the platform has listed over 1,800 properties while renting it to almost 3,500 tenants in the last three years. Operational only in Bengaluru as of now, in the last one month the firm has gotten on board close to 305 properties, renting it to 200 tenants. Through this funding, the firm is looking to expand their offerings to Mumbai and Delhi.
Speaking about the platform, Sudarshan Purohit, Co-founder and CEO of Zenify, says,
Over the past few months we have been concentrating on developing new services to ease pain points of rentals in India. We have already witnessed a major shift in consumer behaviour. Over 90% of the rental property booking is being done online through Zenify. We hope to take our product to other tenants and owners across India and help solve the rental problems.
Being in the rental management space, the platform takes exclusive access of an owner’s property while making necessary amendments to them. After the property is ready, it is put up for rent to the customers. As a part of the deal, the platform charges the owners for the first month’s rent, with no service fee charged to the tenants. The customers have to pay a token amount of Rs 10,000 to book the property.
By the end of this fiscal year, the firm is planning to have on board a total of 6,000 properties on its platform in three cities. The company also intends to enter the property sales segment. They are also look to close a Series A funding by the end of this year.
Mid-last year, the firm had raised a seed round of Rs 4 crore from MSC Srikanth and M Bharath from K12 Techno Service and Atul Jalan, Founder and CEO of Mathan Software Service, taking the total funding count to Rs 10 crore. Phanindra Sama, Co-founder of Redbus, is already part of their advisory board.
Zenify operates in a highly competitive industry. There are the big players like 99acres, MagicBricks, Quikr, IndiaProperty that work on the listing side (classifieds) of the home rentals and sales business. Then, there are players like Grabhouse, who work on not just listing but also provide services to get you the right house through their premium models.
Finally there is a new breed of PG accommodation model in the form of NestAway, which just raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata in February. There is also Homigo which works on a similar fully-furnished PG accommodation model, along with others.
Website: www.zenify.in